Morrison’s push to privatise Medicare

The Coalition is privatising Medicare by stealth, expanding labour hire across the Department of Human Services.

At the last election, under immense community pressure, Malcolm Turnbull said of Medicare...

“It will never be sold. Every element of Medicare services that is being delivered by the government today, will be delivered by government in the future. Full stop. That is a fact.”

Prime Minister Morrison is now in breach of that promise.

As labour hire employees have been brought into Medicare in Hobart. Last year the Coalition started the privatisation of Centrelink, they have now sold off over 1,000 labour hire and 2,750 call centre jobs to private multinationals including one of the worlds most reviled corporations Serco. This expansion of labour hire into Medicare is the next step in the process to privatise Medicare and Centrelink.

Together, we need to remind the Prime Minister what happens when they try to sell off our Medicare. Donate to our campaign fund today and with your help, we can get the word out across Australia. We could have radio ads like this playing in marginal electorates where the Coalition will be paying attention.

Private corporations should have no place in handling our sensitive health records. Labour hire causes severe problems for the quality and reliability of service delivery. Labour hire workers are being paid less, receive significantly less training and support and work under inferior conditions with little or no job security.

In June this year, we delivered 3,307 community submissions to Minister for Human Services Michael Keenan that called on him to stop the privatisation of Centrelink. To this day the Minister has not responded and has ignored our requests to meet. Instead, he has pushed ahead with privatising Centrelink and now Medicare.

We know Australia wants our Medicare and Centrelink to be owned by us, not by private corporations. At the last election, community pressure meant that Medicare became the defining issue of the election and the Coalition was forced to back away from their plan to privatise.

The Coalition are feeling the pressure of an upcoming Federal Election, our campaign fund will help get the message out to alert the community to their privatisation plans and put the Coalition on notice – if they don’t put a stop to this privatisation the community will put a stop to them.